Mountain Mayhem, its an event I’ve got a bit of history with. This year was my 7th Mayhem, at its 3rd venue and from memory I’ve had 17 different team mates! Mayhem was the first event that captured my imagination in the magazines, back in ‘97 when it was sponsored by Red Bull. In fact, I was so keen to race, I was a bit creative about my age to enter the race in 2000…
This year Team Spanky was reinstated with George Rose, Pete Turnbull, Mark Spratt and myself making the 4 man, Sport team. This was certainly a fast group of riders, with myself being the slowest member by some margin.
The week leading up to Mayhem had seen the best weather of the year so far. So, it should have come as no surprise that when we set off on Friday evening for Eastnor the sky was as grey as the road, which kind of mirrored the feeling in the van. We kept the faith though and had our BBQ in the rain although the atmosphere Friday night was a bit flat, partly due to the weather but also due to the fact everyone seemed so spread across the huge campsite.
Saturday morning came, as did the sun. Mark, Pete and George all arrived on the Saturday morning and once we were done faffing we set of for a practice lap together. The course seemed to be good, but it was going to be hard and if the weather deteriorated the first singletrack would become very ‘interesting’. The course was a real MTB’ers course with lots of power sections where you just needed to suck it up and keep pounding away. Whilst there weren’t any bad parts to the course, there weren’t really too many bits I would be looking forward to either. Or practice lap came in at a comfortable 54min so we were anticipating ~ 50 min laps once the race began. Its always amazing how much more effort it takes to reduce the lap times by a relatively small amount.
The race got underway at 2pm, George took the honour of first lap and the le mans style run that starts the race off. A strong run saw him coming through to the transition in about 30th place. Game on. Even with the run included in his laptime, George was comfortably sub 50mins as he handed over to Pete. Pete the continued the rapid pace putting in our fastest lap of the race at 46:16. I already knew I was going to be the slowest in the team but I was beginning to get nervous about how much slower I would be. Mark put in a 46:23 sending me out onto the course for the first time. Thankfully, I was able to cut through the traffic reasonably well and got back into the arena in just over 49 minutes. Slower, but not too much slower. All I had to do now was stay consistent for the next 21 hours!
With the first rider rotation complete, we were obviously going to be battling with a few other fast teams in the Sport Category. The Fenboy Slackers (James & Paul Ashby and Adi & Nigel Scott) being the obvious names that stood out to me. Friend Adi is always fast and I knew he had gone well at the Bristol 6hr event a few weeks back. All the other guys are strong riders and names often seen at the top of the results lists so this was going to be a tough race.
Thankfully the rain held of and the weather remained hot in the sun, cold in the wind. Ideal racing weather. We completed three full rider rotations before pairing up with a 1 on, 1 off rotation to allow some time off through the night. Unlike any other 24, I seemed to be able to sleep whenever I wasn’t riding or eating. I usually don’t like napping but I had been so tired going into this event, every 20 min nap I could steal was golden. Pete and George too the early shift and continued to bang out the consistent lap times. Lap by lap the lead was changing along with the margin. The Fenboys would take the lead, we’d eat away at the margin, the lead would change. Repeat.
Pete, not content with having the fastest lap of the race also collected the slowest lap when he shifted down into granny, only for his chain to wedge between the bottom bracket shell and the cranks. Thanks for that Pete – you saved me the honour of having the slowest lap! As the only member of the team not riding an Anthem X3, the problem was plain to see! 
I was back out about 3am to put in our 18th lap, the lead we held at this point was just under 90 seconds and seeing Adi Scott in the handover corral I wasn’t confident I would be able to hold that margin. Sure enough, on the second climb out the arena I sensed a rider sitting on my wheel. As we approached the top, he kicked and passed me. Determined I wasn’t going to let the lead slip I dug in and tried my hardest to keep up with him. Over the next section of the lap he was pulling away, but he was still in sight so hope was not lost. By the final climb he seemed to be slowing and I put a big effort in to close the gap down further. Adi entered the off camber singletrack 4 riders ahead of me, unfortunately one of those riders was unable to ride the off camber section and proceeded to crash into me, wiping me out totally as I saw the Fenboy disappear. I got going again and kept chasing but the Fenboys now had the lead by over a minute.
We were all riding strong and most importantly consistently. Whilst the lead was Yo-Yo’ing it was just a case of pushing on and hoping that when the cracks started to appear, they weren’t on our team! There was very little to call between the 4 of us by this point. What I seemed to lack in raw pace, I was making up with consistency. Mark, George and Pete were all flying and looking strong.
As I waited for Mark to come into the changeover area and send me out on my next lap, Nige Scott was waiting for the Fenboys. Talking to Nige he said he was feeling ill and wasn’t looking forward to the lap. By this point I wasn’t really looking forward to the lap but I couldn’t be sure how bad he was feeling. No one ever feels great when they are about to set of for their lap, 14hrs into a 24hr race!
Thankfully for me, this wasn’t racers bluff. Nige had a 60 second head start on me but I had caught him by the time I was halfway up the Kenda climb. I pushed as hard as I could for the rest of the lap, taking chances on the descents and resisting the temptation to look over my shoulder. By the end of my lap, the 60 second deficit had become a 6 minute advantage. Thankfully, that was the trend throughout the rest of the race. For a horrible moment we thought Adi had put in a 44min lap and closed the gap right down, when Jan spotted someone in the Fat Birds strip riding past our camp. That turned out to be a case of mistaken identity!
We all remained strong to the end, with Mark keen to get one more lap in before the end of the race. George put a blinder in to get round to the changeover area with 6 minutes to spare. A fired up Mark set off for his last lap and to see the race home with a blistering last lap of 49:33 which included finishing in style by crossing the finish line on the LikeabikeXL!
Having now achieved the goal of winning Mayhem, I’m not sure if I will race again as a team. Mayhem is a magical event, it always will be special and it was the event that has bred so many others. This year, there was a feeling that the main event was more that of mass participation and money making, rather than racing and the atmosphere. There was a marked lack of ‘club’ racing going on, and the standard of riding seemed to reflect that the event is now appealing more to the ‘have a go’ brigade and less so to the racers. That’s absolutely fine and I am not complaining, but with so many events out there to choose from, its another factor to consider when we sit down to look at the 2011 calendar.
Overall it was a great team effort and it was a great feeling to win – made even better by it being such a good race. We completed 30 laps in 24:43:07 which saw us 4th placed team overall, only beaten by Scott, Hope in the Elite cat and KCNC in the Open cat. I was happy with my consistency and my pace wasn’t as slow as I had feared going into the event. Racing with the other guys was inspiring and motivation to keep training hard in an effort to catch them up! So that’s that, Mountain Mayhem winners! Happy days!
